[vel0city]

> found them to be incredibly efficient while idling.

Its not really that they're incredibly efficient, its that the energy needed to move you home and back again overall is massively more than what you'd use idling. Its still a very inefficient use of energy, from the perspective of the amount of energy in the gasoline being burned versus the actual useful work you got out of it in the end.

In that video the 2012 Mazda 3 used $1.53 in energy cost to do pretty much nothing at all. There was some snow on the ground but it was otherwise sunny, so I doubt it really needed to try and heat that much but I don't really know the air temp. That pickup used $4.10 in energy cost to once again also do practically nothing. The Outback used $2.95.

My EV has a 68kWh useful battery pack. Idling for two hours in extreme heat might use 10%, but I doubt that. I'll regularly precondition for 15-30 minutes when its hot outside to bring it down to temp (way more work bring it down from 100 than keeping it 70) and it normally only eats a few percent of the battery, but we'll err on the high side it'll be fine. I pay ~$0.10/kWh. 68 * 10% * $0.10 = $0.068. And even then, if it was a decent-ish day outside (sunny, not cold wind or extreme heat, probably like in the video) my EV would have used probably less than 2% keeping the stereo and DRLs on for a couple of hours.

My EV is pretty similar to that Outback. So for about the same idling that Outback would cost almost $3 while my EV would cost less than $0.10.

[cptskippy]

I wasn't attempting to say an ICE more efficient or as efficient as an EV, we all know they are no where near approaching similar efficiency. I was just pointing out that for an ICE idling is their most efficient state next to being shut off and is significantly more efficient that when moving.

We tend to think of ICE efficiency in terms of MPG and naturally assume that their idling efficiency to be similar to their maximum driving efficiency and that's incorrect.